Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte – Finished reading 06.10.12 I loved the BBC adaptation; I know I will love this book.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail BulgakovRecommend by Crissy as her favourite book.

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John Le CarreRecommended by Dan

Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins – Finished reading 23.08.13I studied The Moonstone at University and loved it, I’ve heard The Woman in White is the superior novel.

Great Expectations by Charles DickensThis will be h only Dickens on the list. Charlie has read this one; ‘I would suggest adding Dickens, but from what I’ve read (Great Expectations) and what I’ve heard from others, while the stories are good, if you’re looking to find hope in the classics, the extreme number of unnecessary words can be very off-putting – worth adding later, perhaps.’

Birdsong by Sebastian FaulkMy friend Harriet adored it and recommended it to me.

The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott FitzgeraldAs with Hemingway. I had also heard his other novels were never as good as Gatsby.

The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald – Unfinished 03.02.14Recommended by EmilyBooks.

Dune by Frank Herbert – Unfinished 22.06.12: I just could not get through it; perhaps I will come back to it later.Recommended to me by many friends as the ultimate science fiction novel

Catch 22 by Joseph HellerI remember a guy I went to school naming his band after this book. It is also a term commonly used, I would like to discover its origin.

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest HemingwayI have thus avoided this book because it is set in a situation I know nothing about. I loved his writing style in The Sun Also Rises, so I need to try his other works.

I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith – Finished reading 06.04.13Recommended by Charli

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
Recommended by Anna.

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope Trollope is mentioned off hand by Dylan Moran’s character Bernard Black in one my favourite comedy series, Black Books; how else to choose literature but through comedy. The reason I have also listed The Warden is that this is the first book of the series, but of what I have read, people prefer Barchester Towers.

Vile Bodies by Evelyn WaughI find the 20s and the hedonistic Bright Young Things fascinating

Small Island by Andrea Levy – Finished reading 04.10.14

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons – Unfinished. Not my cup of tea.

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee – Unfinished. Not my cup of tea.

A Crime in the Neighborhood by Suzanne Berne

When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe – Finished reading 21.07.14

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

Middlemarch by George Eliot

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway – read!

Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

March by Geraldine Brooks

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore

Oroonoko by Aphra Ben

On Writing by Stephen King

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

The Fingersmith by Sarah Waters – Read!

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making

18 thoughts on “Books Before 30”

How about The Blue Castle by L M Montgomery? There’s a free ebook on Gutenberg Australia. It’s not serious or particularly thought-provoking but it’s a riot and sort of a forgotten classic (don’t be put off by the romance covers, even if there is romance in it). And I Capture The Castle, definitely.

I saw your plea on Twitter for more book recommendations, and I am nothing if not a fan of sharing cultural tastes of mine as a form of showing off.

You already have my favourite book on your list; Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell. Read that, then come back and finish this comment.

See? It’s really great, right?

Otherwise, a book that holds a place in my mind is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Before we go any further; if you are unfortunate to have bore witness to the witless adaptation as a feature film, then I implore to expel as many frames from your memory as possible and start the book a fresh. If you haven’t seen the film; don’t. It’s atrocious.

The book is a better example of post-modern literature than anything I’ve read by Palahniuk or Vonnegut. It’s also a beautiful example of learning about characters without any explicit information. You grow over the book to know Oskar the same way you would understand any child; not by the things he does or the things he says, but the *way* he does and says them. I love this book. It’s very playful with the novel as a form, as well. I cannot stress this enough; this book will ONLY work as a paperback. Do not get it on a Kindle. It won’t work. Trust me.

If you’ve ready that, or don’t fancy it, then another book I’ve read recently and enjoyed was the breakout novel of John Le Carre; The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. This was before Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy and is the story that gave him fame. It’s a very tight, unforgiving cold war tale, but with a beauty at it’s heart that can only be seen when surrounded by the callousness of the world of The Circus, created by Le Carre. This is a quick read, and if you don’t like Spy Fiction, don’t worry. More than any of his other books, this transcends the genre it’s written in and I think appeals to a broad audience.

And if you’ve given up on reading, but still want a story, listen to Our Mutual Friend by The Divine Comedy, from the album, Absent Friends. If I’m honest, listen to the whole album, but this one track is a grand novel condensed into a devastating song.

Anyway, that should be enough to be getting on with. I’ve been told endlessly to read Rebecca and I see it was on your list, too. I shall add it to mine.

What a fabulous project! I hope you might find some more books to fall in love with on my blog, TheNorthern Reader. My Desert Island book? The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen (or that’s my choice for today, anyway). Best wishes from the north: as you so rightly say, there is a lot more to Britain than London!

Hi Alice. 🙂 I came here to ask if I could yoink your yoinked idea and then I felt the urge to add a recommendation as well so here goes. 😉 Not sure if fantasy/children’s novels are your sort of thing but I read The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making (I know, long title) a while ago and I LOVED it. It is a little bit The Little Prince-ish (which I will recommend too, in case you haven’t read it yet) but then with a more solid story line as well and less… floaty. Still, I enjoyed both books. 🙂 Give them a try if they sound like your sort of thing.

Something by Willa Cather. A beautiful writer who was somewhat overwhelmed by louder voices in the twentieth century, now we are starting to appreciate her more. My Antonia and O Pioneers! are perhaps her most famous, but take your pick of what looks interesting to you. And something by Thornton Wilder. In addition to his iconic plays, he wrote eight novels – The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Theophilus North are my favorites, but all of them are interesting.